Chapter 1 #2
She giggles again, and now I realize the giggling is a sign of her fear. "I'm usually good at managing my emotions. I have to be, to do the job I do. But this is…in part, I know I've trained for this my whole life. But now that it's here, I'm scared out of my mind."
"I am too," I whisper. "Or, I was, at first. I thought they were gonna, like, cut my fingers off or something. But then it's just been me alone in this fucking black box for…however long it's been. Now I'm just bored and pissed off."
"Well, I'm still in the fear stage." A long pause. "I, um…I really really don't want to for a lot of reasons, but it's at the point now where I don't have a choice."
I cough a little laugh. "Story?"
"Hmm?"
"You don't want to what?"
"I have to pee. Like, really bad."
"Cross the container and then left to the corner. There's a bucket."
A pause. "Killy, I'm a girl."
"Hasn't escaped my notice." My tone is so dry and wry that there's no chance she doesn't catch something in it and give away my hopeless, helpless attraction.
She sighs. "You have a sister, Killy. Do I really need to spell this out?"
I try to fathom what she's talking about and fail. “Um, I guess so, yeah."
"Peeing in a bucket as a girl wearing pants is…tricky."
"Ohhhh," I breathe, understanding dawning. "The whole sitting-down thing."
She chuckles dryly. "Yes, Killy, the whole sitting-down thing. It's hard enough to pee outside in the woods as a girl when I can see what I'm doing. In the dark, in a bucket, in the hold of a ship on open ocean?”
I clear my throat. "Ah. Yes. Right. I…can see how that might be tricky."
"What I'm saying, Killian," her voice is desert-dry now, "is that I'm going to need some help."
"Oh." I try to picture what that would look like and utterly fail. "Um…okay. I…sure. Whatever you need."
She groans a laugh. "This is my worst nightmare, by the way. I'm pee shy as it is. I can hold my pee for…god, for ages. But I can’t anymore. I know it's gonna be gross and awkward, and I'm sorry."
I stand up, pushing my back against the wall for balance—the ship is moving, and I think she’s right that we're on the open ocean, judging by the way the floor tilts this way and that as we drift up one wave and down another…
big waves, long slides down and longer climb-ups, and the occasional stomach-twisting pitch from side to side.
Once I'm on my feet, I brace one hand on the wall and hunt the darkness with the other until I make contact with her.
I grope blindly at the first brush—clothing, and then something firm, and then something soft and squishy.
Story's hand grips my wrist and gently but firmly pulls my hand away. "Um, Killy? That's my boob."
My heart leaps into my throat, and I yank my hand away like I’d touched a hot stovetop. "Sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry."
She huffs a laugh. "It's okay. Just…here." She somehow finds my hand in the darkness, and I help her up. "Now where is this damn bucket?"
I try not to think about the fact that I touched her chest. It was the briefest of contact—a single, simple touch, unknowing and accidental. But now that I know?
Fuck.
I push that idiocy out of my head as much as I can, keeping Story's hand in mine as I shuffle along the wall. The pitch and roll of the floor are more pronounced than I’d realized, and I decide it’s a better plan to follow the wall than to cross the empty space.
We reach the corner eventually, shuffling and shuffling as the container dips and rises, bucks and yaws—and then there’s a tickling of fingers on the metal overhead, tapping tapping tapping in a staccato rhythm.
And then a hundred fingers, and then a deafening deluge of what sounds like a hail of bullets on the container—followed by a crash of thunder and then the increased pitch of the floor.
A storm.
Story puffs a laugh. “Really right now?” She stumbles as the desk pitches us forward and then rolls us left.
We both topple to the floor in a tangle of limbs hitting unforgiving metal.
The air is knocked out of me as Story lands on top of me, an elbow in my gut and her face against mine.
I smell coffee on her breath. Her thigh is between mine, her knee jammed uncomfortably if not painfully against my tenders.
My head is at an awkward angle against the wall, my neck tilted and turned, and until Story untangles herself from me, I'm stuck.
She puts a hand on my chest for balance and tries to find her knees, but in doing so her knee smashes my balls against the floor.
"Killy?"
I can't breathe. Can't move. The agony is excruciating and I can't do a thing except gag through it.
"Killy, what—what's wrong?"
"Knee," I gasp through gritted teeth.
She pats at my chest, wriggles, shifts, and then stills as her hands explore enough to orient herself to my body—now moving gingerly, she wriggles backward, one hand on my thigh as she finds her balance. "Did I…um…?"
“Yep,” I rasp, my voice tight and hoarse.
"I kneed you?"
"Yeah," I rasp again.
"In the testicles?"
“Yep.” I cackle as breath returns with the slow cessation of the pain. "Not so much kneed as knelt on."
Her hands pat my belly, and then, unexpectedly, my zipper. "Killy, I'm so sorry."
I grab at her hands before she can make contact again. "Story?" I ask, pushing them away from my throbbing privates. "Patting my balls isn't going to help."
"That was…?"
"Yup."
"I thought it was—"
I laugh. "Nope."
Something thunks against metal. "Killian, I'm so, so sorry. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I’m fine. It was an accident."
"Speaking of accidents, I'm about to have one."
I work to my feet and then tap on the wall. "That's my hand. So I don't grope you again."
Another of those uncharacteristic giggles—she's typically restrained, quiet and reserved like her mother and Uncle Selm. When she laughs, it's a quiet, musical thing whereas these giggles seem to burst out of her, noisy and abrupt. "I appreciate that, Killian, thank you."
"I can't tell if you're joking," I say.
"Me either!" A huff of laughter. "I'm sorry. I'm cracking a little bit, I think. It’s just that I’m about to pee myself and I really don't want to do that when we don't have any idea when we'll be able to change clothes again."
Or if, I don’t say.
Her hand finds mine; I help her to her feet, and we make our way along the wall to the next corner. Then I pat my way down the corner until I find the rim of the plastic bucket.
“Okay, so, um…how does this work?" I ask. "How, um…how do I help?"
She thinks for a moment. "I…ugh. This is so mortifying, Killian. And I'm so, so glad you can't see anything because this is going to be so embarrassing." A sigh. "I have to get half undressed, basically, or I risk getting pee all over my pants. So first I think just help me balance."
“Okay, here." I take her hand and guide it to my shoulder. "Lean against the wall and hang on to me."
Thunder booms overhead with such deafening noise that my ears ring, and the ship pitches violently—quite a thing when the ship is a five-hundred-foot-long container ship with all the latest stabilization technology.
"Easier said than done," she mutters.
I lean against the wall as well and hold her shoulders with my hands, keeping her balanced as she tries to remove her pants.
"Dammit," she hisses. "I knotted these stupid things too tight and I have to pee so fucking bad I can’t—dammit!" She’s audibly in a panic, and I can feel her shifting her weight with desperation.
"I…here, let me try." I follow her arm to her shoulder and then find her hip, and then her hands as she frantically tries to unknot the string of what I assume are her scrub bottoms.
I feel the knot, consciously not hurrying even though I know time is of the essence because Dad has drilled into my head that when you rush, you fuck up.
Or, as Uncle Dukes likes to preach: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” I find the edges of the knot, the shape of it, and then work one loop loose with my short, blunt fingernails.
After that, it's a simple matter of tugging the knot apart the rest of the way.
As soon as I have the knot undone, Story is frantically shoving her bottoms down.
"Okay. Okay." She leans back into the corner and takes my hands. "Hold me, please. Just…help me balance. I just have to…"
I hear the hollow scrape of the bucket as she adjusts it, gripping both of my hands in one of hers while trying to balance against the wall in what I imagine is an awkward and difficult crouch, hovering over the bucket.
"Um, why not just sit on it?" I ask.
She cackles, sounding a bit hysterical. "Shush. Don’t—just don't talk. Please don't talk."
Once she has the bucket positioned, judging by the cessation of the scraping, Story grasps at my arms and holds tightly, pushing and pulling to stay balanced as the ship bucks and tosses with the violence of the storm.
"Dammit. I can do this. Just pee, dammit."
"I thought—"
"Shut up!"
My teeth click together at the intensity of her snapped command.
And then I hear a couple of tick-tick-ticks as the first drops hit the bucket. Then a few more tick-tick-ticks, and Story lets out a tight breath. I find myself holding my own breath in commiseration.
And then she finally manages to relax enough to unleash, and the tick-tick-tick of individual droplets of pee becomes a tight hard stream that echoes in the plastic bucket, the noise rising in pitch by degrees as she pees for an eternity.
Literally, she must pee for at least a full minute.
"And nothing to wipe with," she grumbles. "Lovely. UTI, here I come."
"I, um…" I hesitate at the offer that pops up in my idiot head, but it's the only idea I have. "You want my shirt?"
She cackles. "Killy, no. I'm not wiping my vagina with your shirt."
"It's hot as fuck in here anyway," I say, trying desperately not to think about her vagina in any capacity whatsoever. "And I’d rather be shirtless than have you uncomfortable because you couldn't…um…wipe."
"Uncomfortable," she echoes, cackling. "You clearly have never had a UTI. Uncomfortable is not the word for it."